FIESTA AT THE FESTIVAL OF WORLD CULTURES
Oxfam Ireland Advocacy Executive,
Colin Roche, talks trade with a
festival-goer
The Dun Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures is where Oxfam Ireland brought together artisans and market traders from around the world to offer visitors a unique shopping experience at the Global Village and World Craft Fair. This year's festival was attended by 220,000 people and over 30 campaigners and volunteers gave their time and energy to support Oxfam Ireland's activities. While a huge range of Fairtrade products was on offer at the Oxfam Fair Trade stall in the World Craft Fair, Oxfam Ireland's tent welcomed people to the outdoor Global Village.
Relaxing on the bean bags and Ugandan stools in the Oxfam chill-out lounge, visitors were able to indulge in a tasty cup of Fairtrade tea or coffee while reading the latest campaigns news or wtaching Oxfam films. From this base and beyond, well over 2,000 signatures to the BIG Noise were collected by our enthusiastic campaigning team.
Next to the chill-out area, the Oxfam team had constructed, especially for the festival, a full-scale replica of an emergency shelter to give an example of the kind of accommodation in which displaced people throughout Africa are forced to live because of war or natural disaster. A special Oxfam Garden shop, a colourful initiative to raise funds through plant growing, was the latest addition to this weekend.
Gayle Fitzpatrick, a volunteer at the event said: "Over three days in Dun Laoghaire, the Festival of World Cultures creates an explosion of flavours, music and the many unique characteristics of countries from around the globe. Many of those countries celebrated in the festival have their quality of life unfairly compromised by many of our Western governments and this is something we need to make more noise about. I was happy to volunteer with Oxfam Ireland at the festival, to be part of raising an awareness about these important issues - from Fair Trade to the arms trade - issues that affect people like you and me, everyday".
WE'RE ALL GOING ON AN
ELECTRIC PICNIC
Bec Emery, Campaigns Coordinator, in
the Oxfam Ireland chill-out tent with the
all-important festival item... wellingtons.
The campaigns team hit the road again going south-west this time to the Electric Picnic in County Laois. With an eclectic variety of music, theatre, and art running non-stop throughout the weekend, the chill-out lounge in the Oxfam tent was the perfect place for festival-goers to learn about our campaigns, join the call to Make Trade Fair. and have a rest! The Big Tree stage, an area put together by Damien Rice, provided the setting for our campaigns team to go out there and talk to an interested audience about the latest developments on trade issues and their consequences for developing countries.
AND MORE...
In addition to these major events, a number of artists also lent their support to Oxfam's campaigns throughout the summer by enabling our volunteers to set up a campaign stand at their gigs. Damien Rice, Bell X1 and Radiohead were among them. BIG cheer to them all!
NEXT YEAR...
Interested in joining us on the festival circuit? Next year we will be organising teams of festival campaigners who will receive training to go out there and engage with the public prior to the festival season. If you would like to be part of this, or simply willing to volunteer at events throughout the year, please let us know at campaigns@oxfamireland.org and we will be in touch.
